Our senses are connected. They function at the nexus of lived experience; the synergy of mind, body and world. These multiple sensory stimulations are integrated by the nervous system to produce meaningful perceptual experiences.

David Eagleman writes in his 2011 book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain how the visual field informs our auditory experience:

“The different senses influence one another, changing the story of what is thought to be out there. What comes in through the eyes is not just business of the visual system—the rest of the brain is invested as well. In the ventriloquist illusion, sound comes from one location (the ventriloquist’s mouth), but your eyes see a moving mouth in a different location (the ventriloquist’s dummy). Your brain concludes that the sound comes directly from the dummy’s mouth. Ventriloquists don’t “throw” their voice. Your brain does all the work for them.”

Multisensory illusions like the Ventriloquist Effect and the McGurk Effect - where the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound - suggest that vision greatly influences auditory perception.